And why no one should be surprised since Israel has a 'violently racist' Minister of National Security intent on expelling all Palestinians from Gaza & all disloyal Arabs from Israel
It's nothing new that Israel's military is using Trump-style disinformation to lie to the world as it uses missiles, bombs, and starvation to kill women, children, journalists, and other unarmed Palestinians with attacks on hospitals, schools, and other civilian locations in Gaza as part of its genocidal mission to raze the strip of land.
What also isn't new is Israel's use of a so-called 'double-tap' attack on Aug. 25, 2025, a particularly horrific, cruel, and internationally criminal tactic to maximize casualties of medical staff and journalists in direct violation of the Geneva Convention.
What's a 'double tap'?
On Aug. 25 at approximately 10 a.m. local time, the Israeli military used a precision missile system – such as Lockheed Martin's Spike NLOS – to bomb Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis in Gaza.
While Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lies to the global community about a "tragic mistake" and that it was a "tank shell," this missile system is essentially a drone-as-bomb. The operator fires the missile and uses real-time video imagery and control during the missile's flight up until the moment of impact.
"This provides operators with the opportunity to alter or abort the mission while en route to the target," that from U.S.-based Lockheed Martin on its website marketing.
This means, of course, that the hit on the hospital was entirely intentional as it was done with precision, guided in from as far away as 32 kilometres controlled right up until the last second when an operator could have aborted. He or she didn't, it hit the hospital killing at least one person, injuring many more, and causing substantial damage.
But this was just the appetizer, the first tap before the main course in Israel's horrific and criminal double-tap.
And yes, targeting a hospital is a war crime under international law even if Israel claimed that it was targeting a Hamas leader which it hasn't. A day after publishing this, Israel claimed it was targeting a Hamas camera that was tracking Israeli soldiers. The main "rules of war" are often described as needing to follow principles humanity, necessity, distinction, and proportionality.
“Humanity is about not inflicting unnecessary suffering," explains James Sweeney, law professor at Lancaster University in the UK in an article in The Conversation (fully reprinted with permission below). “Necessity requires that in applying the other rules a commander should be able to do what they need to 'win,' but no more than that. Distinction requires that only lawful objectives should be targeted for attack. Proportionality requires that when a lawful objective is attacked, the expected 'collateral damage' should not be excessive to the expected military advantage of the attack.”
So it doesn't take a lawyer to conclude from that explanation that the latest attack on Nasser Hospital grossly violated all four of those tenets. It caused unnecessary suffering, certainly was not needed to win, was not a lawful objective, and even if a Hamas leader was in the hospital, the collateral damage here was staggeringly excessive. (And I say "latest" here because attacks on Nasser Hospital have been many. More than a year ago, Doctors Without Borders reported on the "deliberate and repeated attacks by Israeli forces" on the hospital in southern Gaza.)
Here's how it went down: After the ironically named Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) hit the hospital with their precision missile system, medical staff rushed to tend to the wounded and journalists rushed to the scene to cover the latest horror. That's when the IDF served up the entree of slaughter with more strikes from their "man-in-the-loop" missile systems guided by an operator who watches what they are trying to hit right up until contact. A livestream by Al Ghad TV showed emergency workers responding to the first strike near the top floor of the hospital while journalists are seen in the background filming what. A BBC report explained that a staircase where journalists often gather to broadcast from is visible in the video. A missile sent to kill those medics, civil defence crews, and journalists then hits them sending smoke and rubble into the air with at least one body visible in the aftermath.
"A separate video, filmed from the same staircase, shows the aftermath of the strike," according to the BBC report. "Bodies can be seen on the staircase, as medics respond to the attack."
Again, this isn't particularly new. Israel has committed dozens of war crimes with hundreds more alleged since they invaded after the Hamas massacre and kidnappings. Benjamin Netanyahu barely apologizes or pretends these incidents are anything other than they are because he can't for a moment waiver in this genocide against Palestinians, propped us as he is politically by the Jewish Supremacist Itamar Ben-Gvir and others. This is a man whose politics include Kahanism, a violently racist movement in support of expelling Palestinians from their lands. He is a lawyer for extremist terrorists and a history of anti-Arab activism with dozens of indictments and more than half a dozen convictions, including incitement of racism and possession of terrorist propaganda. As the leader of his own far-right political party in a coalition helping Netanyahu stay in power, Ben-Gvir has been the Minister of National Security since November 2022, 11 months before the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks.
All that is to say, that the horrors underway in Gaza right now were predictable and preventable and the whole world knows it, but everyone is terrified of holding Israel to account. The King of Jordan even warned the Israeli President Isaac Herzog (yes, Israel has a presidency and a prime minister) about Ben-Gvir at COP27, the 2022 UN Climate Change Summit. Herzog was later caught on a hot mic in November 2022 saying that the "entire world" was worried about Ben-Gvir becoming a minister in Netanyahu's then nascent coalition government. As the elected incoming head of the extremist Otzma Yehudit party, Ben-Gvir demanded he receive the public security ministry overseeing police in the incoming government. Netanyahu did him one better and invented a new position, Minister of National Security.
All that is to say, Ben-Gvir looms as a truly evil perpetrator in the current genocide in which Netanyahu is either leading or being puppeted by coalition partners to stay in power.
So why exactly was the Aug. 25, 2025 Nasser Hospital double-tap massacre a war crime? Lancaster University law school professor James Sweeney explains in an article on The Conversation, an online international journal of academic reporting on a wide range of issues.
The following article is shared with permission of The Conversation under the Creative Commons licence – PJH
Was the ‘double tap’ attack on Gaza’s Nasser hospital a war crime? Here’s what the laws of war say
James Sweeney, Lancaster University
There has been widespread international outrage at Israel’s attack on Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, northern Gaza, on August 25. The attack took the form of a “double tap” strike. The first attack killed at least one person, then – as medics, journalists and other responders rushed to the scene – a second attack on the same location killed another 20 people. This included five journalists and several medical staff treating people injured in the first attack.
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has called the incident a “tragic mishap”. But whether or not the attacks on the hospital were intentionally directed, the double tap tactic almost certainly falls under those acts of war prohibited by the law of armed conflict and could constitute a war crime on that basis alone.
Whether or not charges specifically relating to the attacks on Nasser Hospital are ever brought, it’s an opportunity to examine how international law operates in situations like this.
Who is fighting who, and why it matters
That the hostilities in Gaza constitute, in international law, an “armed conflict” is beyond doubt. That means that there are grounds for the application of the law of armed conflict (LOAC) – or as it is also known, international humanitarian law.
If we see today’s conflict as being between Israel and Hamas, then it would be a non-international conflict because it would not be between two or more states. But if it is between Israel and Palestine then, whether or not Israel recognises Palestine as a valid state, it would be international. In May 2024, International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor Karim Khan caused some controversy when he said that it was both, running in parallel.
This issue is important because the rules covering international and non-international armed conflict are not the same. The rules on international armed conflict are older and more detailed. This also means that there are separate lists of international and non-international war crimes in the Rome Statute, the treaty that established the ICC. But the LOAC rules relevant to a double-tap attack are similar enough in both types of conflict that we can postpone coming to a conclusion on this until such as time as war crime charges are actually brought.
Law of armed conflict
The first essential feature of LOAC is that it is all based on the idea that the means (weapons) and methods (tactics) used in an armed conflict are “not unlimited”. That is why some weapons are banned – chemical weapons, for example. When it comes to tactics it is, for example, unlawful to order to “take no prisoners”.
There are other even more fundamental rules on methods that govern the conduct of hostilities.
The main rules on hostilities are often said to be humanity, necessity, distinction and proportionality. Humanity is about not inflicting unnecessary suffering. Necessity requires that in applying the other rules a commander should be able to do what they need to “win”, but no more than that. Distinction requires that only lawful objectives should be targeted for attack. Proportionality requires that when a lawful objective is attacked, the expected “collateral damage” should not be excessive to the expected military advantage of the attack.
It’s important to note that a judgement on proportionality must be made before a military action is launched and during an attack “constant care” should be taken that the situation really is what the military commander thought it was when they ordered the attack. That rule is meant to minimise accidents.
Double-tap attacks
Distinction and proportionality are the key principles for looking at a “double-tap attack” such as the one on August 25. First, applying the rule on distinction, there are only very limited circumstances in which a hospital could ever be a lawful target. Hospitals are marked out for special protection under the Geneva Conventions. The same goes for journalists, who are protected alongside all other civilians, as long as they do not become engaged in fighting.
Further to this, it would be reasonable to expect that after a lethal attack medics would attend the site, and journalists might want to cover it. Launching the second attack could therefore be said to be either intentionally directed against the medics and journalists or, at the very least, uncaring as to whether both lawful and unlawful targets might be killed. That is known as an “indiscriminate” attack. So it also violates the rule on distinction. It is also difficult to see how the second attack could have been accidental.
And even if it were argued that the hospital was a lawful target, for example due to being used by Hamas fighters to stage attacks on the Israeli forces, the collateral damage was almost certainly going to be vast. So, for that reason, it would violate the rule on proportionality.
Israel is a state party to the Geneva Conventions of 1949, which require that “grave breaches” of their rules are investigated and prosecuted. Alternatively, and whether or not the conflict is found to be international or non-international, the Rome Statute provides a solid basis for the above violations of LOAC to be prosecuted as war crimes at the International Criminal Court.
James Sweeney, Professor, Lancaster Law School, Lancaster University This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
-30-
Want to support independent journalism?
Consider becoming a paid subscriber or make a one-time donation so I can continue this work.
Paul J. Henderson
pauljhenderson@gmail.com
facebook.com/PaulJHendersonJournalist
instagram.com/wordsarehard_pjh
x.com/PeeJayAitch
wordsarehard-pjh.bsky.social
Read more posts by this author
